1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a headdress for wearing on the head of a person. Specifically, the present invention relates to a cap including a cap body which has an opening for passing a bundle of hair wherein the cap body also includes a gathering mechanism for holding the bundle of hair and the cap body in a fixed relationship.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Head caps, often called "sport caps", are a common headdress for being worn over the head of a person. Such caps typically include a hemi-spherically shaped cap body and a bill protruding from a bottom front portion of the cap body. Head caps are commonly worn by wearers while the wearers engage in physical activity. The bill of the head cap provides a functional advantage of shading the eyes of the wearer from the sun. However, the bill also may catch wind generated by the wearer as the wearer moves forward tending to force the head cap from the wearers head. For this reason, head caps are often worn tightly on the head of the wearer.
It is common for a wearer of a sports cap to bundle his/her hair into one of more "pony tails" when wearing a sports cap if the wearer has long hair. The pony tail hair style enables the wearer to pull a portion of his hair, proximal to his scalp, tightly over his head while allowing a distal portion of his hair, bundled in a pony tail, to extend out from the cap body.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,511,249 discloses a head cap including a cap body having an opening on an upper central crown portion of the cap body which is in a general registry of the crown of the wearers head when the cap is worn. The opening is large enough to extend a bundle of hair, such as in a "pony tail" style, through the opening. The cap body provides support for the crown portion of the cap, adjacent the opening, and provides lateral support for the hair of the wearer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,511,249 further discloses a head cap having more than one opening in a cap body. Openings are provided in the cap body in positions oppositely spaced with respect to a front to back median of the cap body. This permits a wearer having a dual pony tail hair style to extend the dual pony tails through the openings.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,511,249 describes an optimal location for an opening in a cap body which creates a relationship between the cap body and the hair of the wearer so that the cap body may be held in place as the wearer moves into the wind. The location of the opening is particularly noted in U.S. Pat. No. 5,511,249. However, the relationship created between the cap body and the hair of the wearer, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,511,249, is not very secure.
The prior art has also known and used caps having cap bodies, formed into a hemi-spherical shape, which include an arc shaped cutout in the rear bottom of the cap body. This cutout is typically used with an elastic strap or adjustable clasp mechanism to tighten the cap body around the head of the wearer. Further, the prior art has known and used caps having a hair elastic, or hair "scruncher", attached above the cutout in the cap body. In such cap designs, the hair elastic, or hair scruncher, is attached to the cap body at a point location, and serves primarily as an ornament. The scruncher is not secured to the cap body so as to hold the cap in place with respect to the bundle of hair of the wearer.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a head cap which allows for extending a bundle of hair through a body of the cap. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a head cap which allows for securing the bundle of hair extending through the body of the cap so that the bundle of hair and the cap are held securely in a fixed relationship which is resistant to wind forces.